Let’s save the kiss for later!

Crystal could hear her heart beating really fast like it was going to pop out of her chest at any moment now as she takes a challenging step towards Orion, looking directly into his honey brown eyes.

"It's quite unfortunate, because I WILL marry you, Crystal Pembroke." He almost whispers, equally taking a challenging step towards her, staring right back at her with an intensity that kept her paralyzed to the spot.

Despite her strong façade, Crystal was scared. Scared of the certainty in his eyes when he had promised to marry her.

Surely, she hated his guts and was irritated by his ambitious nature now, but what if he somehow found a way to cheat his way into her heart? Involuntary shivers immediately run through her at the thought, No! She was never going to let that happen.

"Let's save the kiss for later!" Eunice taunts, clearly misinterpreting the situation of seeing them nose to nose with almost zero space between them.

Both Orion and Crystal immediately back away from each other as though the other had just being diagnosed with a deadly virus, startled by her voice.

"It's not what you think!" Crystal immediately defends, at the same time, Orion also tells his mother that she had misunderstood the situation.

"Sureeee." Eunice replies them both, not buying it one bit. She was happy it seemed like they were getting along well, which was something she wasn't so lucky with during her arranged marriage with Richard, her husband.

Richard and her were obviously doing much better now with the kids now in the picture and the number of years they had spent together as husband and wife, but she sometimes remembered how difficult it had been to make him look at her, the way she noticed Orion had just looked at Crystal.

"The ceremony has already begun and it can't go any further without the two of you, so please come back inside." She pleads, ignoring their second attempt to justify why they had been standing so close to each other.

On reflex, Orion raises his arm and offers it to Crystal, wanting them to walk together into the venue but Crystal scoffs in return, rejecting his pretentious attempt of chivalry and walks towards Eunice by herself.

"Is it possible for me to have a few minutes to myself, I'll come right in after that. I just need some more air." Crystal pleads with not just her words but also with her eyes.

"Of course sweetheart, take all the time you need." She replies, squeezing Crystal's hands in a reassuring way.

"Don't take too long though, you need to be present for us to actually get engaged." Orion adds, his statement seemed sweet to Eunice, who was oblivious of the tension growing between them. But Crystal could decipher that his true intentions were to tease her.

Crystal finally succumbs to the urge of taking off her shoes, sits on the ground and lets the grass tickle her perfectly manicured feet in an attempt to calm her nerves down, now that she had been left alone.

She suddenly felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. She had always known that this arranged marriage was not what she wanted, but she had hoped for the best after her mother had assured her that Orion was a sweetheart and her father had assured her that she would be gone in a month's time.

Now, as she realized the true, and ugly nature of Orion, she couldn't help but panic. Her mind raced with thoughts of being trapped in this marriage forever, never being able to escape the clutches of the selfish and power-hungry Orion Kellington.

The panic built and built until finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She gasped for air as a full-blown panic attack took hold, tears streaming down her face as she realized that she might never be free from this nightmare.

"Breathe Crys, Breathe!" Karen rushes towards Crystal, rubbing her back, trying to calm her down.

Karen had been with Crystal for almost all her life and she had never once seen the bold, audacious, heiress, having a panick attack even when the entire family had to stay locked up in the safe room for nearly a month. So to say she was worried was a huge understatement.

"Please breathe okay, everything is going to be okay." She says softly, pulling Crystal in for a hug and patting her hair in a comforting manner.

Soon enough, Crystal regains her composure but remains silent, not willing to say a word.

"Did Orion do this to you?" Karen questions, already very upset. Crystal could see that she was ready to beat him to a pulp, no longer a fan of his."

"How did you find me?" Crystal asks, replying to her question with a question, merely out of habit.

"Eunice told me that you had just finished having a talk with Orion and that you seemed like you needed a familiar face to talk to so I hurried here." She explains, Crystal gave a weak smile at the thought of Eunice's kindness, that woman was really a sweetheart.

"Now tell me what happened, you've been ignoring my questions all day and I decided to let it go but I can't anymore, not after this." She says, referring to Crystal's panic attack.

"Talk." She warns, clearly not going to take no for an answer.

Sighing in defeat, Crystal tells her everything that had happened that day. From walking into Orion kissing the blondie to Richard's comment about how she would be sharing a room with Orion so that they could start trying to bear an heir and finally about the nerve-wracking conversation she just had with Orion.

"Those sick bastards!" Karen replies for lack of a better word to communicate her anger.

"You haven't even been here for more than a day and they are already spitting out nonsense! I was wrong, everything isn't going to be fine unless we get the hell out of this horrible place." Karen concludes.

"That was what I thought too but what then? My dad loses all his money and I become a disappointment to my family?" Crystal asks rhetorically.

"There's no way your parents will hear what you're going through and let you stay here Crystal, we're leaving." Karen persists.

"Do you really think they don't already know?" Crystal retorts, giving Karen a knowing look.

Of course her parents knew but they had sent her here anyways, Crystal wasn't mad at them, she knew they wouldn't have if they had a choice.

"I'm sorry Crys, I really am." Karen says defeatedly, now accepting that her friend's fate was sealed and no matter how many curse words she sent their way, it wasn't going to stop what was coming.

"It's only a month, just like you told me. I just have to scale through it and I'm sure by the end of it, my father would have found a loophole to get me out of here, he has to." Crystal says, assuring both herself and Karen.

"So what are we going to do now?" Karen asks weakly.

"Get engaged I guess." Crystal says, getting up from the grass as though a new found determination was caressing her and whispering in her ears that everything was going to be all right.